Dragonflight Professions Update - Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 235

Posted 2022/07/10 at 11:00 AM by SamadanPlaysWoW

reported last weekSamadanDragonflight Professions Update update from Blizzard

With Dragonflight development in full swing, you will soon get a chance to try out the new and updated profession system in World of Warcraft. This system has been designed to provide greater depth and engagement, allowing you—the crafters of Azeroth—to differentiate yourselves and stand out from your peers.Before diving into the details of crafting, it’s worth noting that there are three main pillars to revamped professions:

Crafting Orders
Profession Specializations
Crafting and Gathering with quality

In this preview, we’re focusing on crafting with quality, but before diving into that topic, a quick summary of the other two for context.

full articleCrafting OrdersCrafting orders are a new way for you to place an order for almost any Dragon Isles crafting recipe using an Auction House-like interface.

The buyer sets the commission price.. much of the latter half of your profession skill will be earned through crafting high end items that require specially earned Soulbound reagents. Since as an individual crafter, you cannot earn enough of these on your own to max your profession, you will often need to fill orders from others to maximize your profession skill.

List Auctions that have not sold.

Restock on items that have sold, look for bargains in raw materials. (Another motivational point)

List newly crafted items.

Optional extra, do things to learn more recipes, gain more skill or collect materials.

Optional extra, cancel scan any auctions that have not sold and repost.

Fulfil work orders depending on competition for completion.

Optional extra, do things to improve profession skill in specialization.

Optional extra, communicate with other players advertising skills in certain professions in the hope for direct work orders.

a crafter previously would decide what to make and what price to set it atIt's now up to the crafter to be online and able to fulfil the work order when it comes in before anyone else gets to it firstPhilosophically, the goal of this system is to have professions be a meaningful source of high-end gear, elevating the importance and value of professions. As a crafter, you’ll need to go to significant effort to gain the skill, specialization, and recipes necessary to craft this gear, but it should be well worth it!

We also hope this means crafting the very highest quality items turns out to be very lucrative, while also being something that a large guild could coordinate to do on their own.

On the other end of the transaction as a crafter, this will be a great new way for you to earn gold, increase your skill, and most importantly, help craft for your friends and guildmates. If you focus on quality and customer service, you might even build up your own following of customers and lock in steady business.The Best of the BestIn all cases, the goal is to have quality matter enough for it to be worth your effort to achieve higher qualities, without having the gains be so large that the lowest quality versions don’t feel worthwhile.

The goal here is to make sure crafting the best of the best, or having it crafted for you, will be no small feat, and one to be proud of. We also want to emphasize that you will never need to rely on luck. Luck can be of much help to you if you want to focus on Inspiration, but it’s never necessary.

Please note though that the goal is not to have high-end gear cost anything remotely approaching the costs of top Legendaries in Shadowlands. In general, we don’t expect the base reagents to be nearly as expensive, and most of the effort to become highly specialized will be through play, not spending gold. Even if for a time only a few players can make the best items at the highest quality, getting an item crafted at a lower quality will be much more achievable. Lower quality items will also only be slightly less powerful, in contrast to the tiers of Legendaries in Shadowlands. Finally, you will be able to get lower quality equipment recrafted to higher quality later by a more skilled crafter for minimal reagents. More details will be forthcoming on recrafting.
What this means in practice is that if you wanted to craft the most difficult recipes at max quality— for example— a chest with an item level equivalent to that of Mythic raids (yes, this will be possible), you would likely need to:

Fully specialize in crafting that type of gear.
Use all top-quality reagents, both required and optional— all of which would require extremely skilled gatherers and crafters as well.
Use the best profession gear you can find, which would also likely require highly specialized crafters to make.

On top of that, you would either need to get lucky with Inspiration or use a valuable Finishing Reagent that boosts skill to guarantee the item is crafted at top quality. In other words, it will take the contribution of many skilled crafters and gatherers, as well as some luck or extra resources to make those best items at the highest quality.This looks sweet! I love the idea of smaller differences in quality. Should make it so you can still sell the lower quality gear.

Also, having skill enough to learn all the recipes before you're maxed out is really cool thematically. I'm not an expert cook because I have a cookbook. I'm an expert cook because I have worked at it.

The one thing I'm worried about is how much seems to be BoP. If crafting orders work well, I think that'll be okay. But boy do I hope they work well.

Would love to see crafting orders for older content so I can sell old BoP transmogs.ManthieusEnd of Expansion Investmentsu/EmeraldNightmare
I’ve made a lot of gold by buying up items towards the end of each expansion, holding them for a year or more before selling. Usually I’m looking for expansion-specific items that would likely be a real pain to farm in the future, or items that might be removed from the game. It’s by far my favourite and easiest way to make gold, you just have to be in it for the long haul.

Last expansion was easy, there were a lot of insanely low drop rate BOE mounts, some with really neat models. I only regret not buying more as I’m nearly out of stock already and most selling for 6 - 12 times what I paid. Pets can work too, but I find them to be slow sellers. Transmog can work. Mats that can be used for BOE mounts are often a good call, as they often crash in price at the end of an expansion, trillium ore and gems for the panthers were a great buy at the end of Pandaria. The holy grail is anything that’s likely to be removed from the game and is of decent value to completionists, some investments I made during WOTLK fetch insane amounts now.

This is the first expansion where I have no idea what to invest in. Mostly as I’ve barely played Shadowlands other than nursing auctions, but also there doesn’t seem to be any decent BoE mounts, anything sought after that looks at risk of becoming unavailable, and nothing else has jumped out to me yet. Any suggestions for long term investments? Anything BOE that’s sought after now, will likely still be sought after in a year or two and will become harder to farm? Or anything else?
Cosmetic weapons drop from ZM mobs (rarely) and Enlightened paragon caches (often). Different tints drop from olea caches. The paragon caches can also contain unique cloak cosmetics. The weapons are pretty common right now and very cheap.The strange goop for that Jelly mount. The item in itself are a pain in the *** to get and with less people in ZM in DF, that will only get worse.Pets that no one will bother to farm. Some can be easy, like Courage. Courage goes for a high price already I can see him going way higher. https://www.wowhead.com/item=184400/courage#comments

Possibly the raid battle pets too. Pets can be even slower to sell though than mounts so your mileage may vary.This is what I’m buying up on my low pop server, strange goop, SL battle pets below 1k gold and the various transmog pieces notably the ones from torghast. I don’t see anyone going out of their way to reclear and farm for the shoulders they want from torghast and they’re dirt cheap on most servers currently. Strange goop already has seen a decrease in people farming it and once we move out of ZM I’d imagine very few will go fish for it on their own. Battle pets I buy every expansion as next expansion returning players who missed them will buy them at a higher price. I’m also hoarding a small batch of the different lattices used to craft ZM mounts (not sure if this will be a good investment or not just holding 5 of each lattice for now).

As a bonus I suggest also to stock up before next expansion on goblin glider kits and other essential movement and leveling items.Further Reading/r/woweconomyDiscord Server

Comment by KledLoved the article, im playing WoW since shadowlands and never looked at crafting like something useful for myself but now Im looking forward to get into it in DF :)Comment by cordell9As a long time crafter that tries to max all professions every expansion. For the first time there seems to be a shift in mindset for professions
Previously with almost all expansions crafted gear was an afterthought. Used for a niche market in MAKING GOLD not in gearing characters.
Now it seems they want to have professions on par with high end gear. They somewhat did this with BOP raid dropped materials but that was only for the crafter themselves.
This time they seem to want the raiders to get the stuff and the crafters to make it
This is a welcome change for crafters that want high end gear
However I think the trade off is they are allowing the buyers to set the market.
This will be a huge hit to the gold makers.
Secondly the region wide materials auction house is gonna make materials dirt cheap. Thereby driving down prices to record lows. Like bags for example.

I personally don’t mind because I have given up trying to play that market game.
I don’t really need more than a million gold that I have. But I am REALLY excited to make stuff for alts. Let my tank farm it up and my crafter make it.Comment by BravejohnThey said that in order to craft the very best armor you will need some materials that will come with weekly quests.. I bet that by the time you are able to craft a "mythic" item you will already not need it anymore but it will be a good for alt gearing not for mainComment by apedosmilConsidering the way work orders work, I hope you can view and interact with work orders in more places than the AH. AH doesn't require you to be online, so work orders need to be more accessible.Comment by kevmauldinConsidering the way work orders work, I hope you can view and interact with work orders in more places than the AH. AH doesn't require you to be online, so work orders need to be more accessible.Comment by AdraekorI wonder if with Dragonflight it will be better to have some of your characters be a crafting/gatherer or still have some being crafter/crafter.

I'm thinking along these lines since there seems to be a lot of BOP materials this time around.

I mean you can do work orders but I don't think you can send a work order to be able to be made by another one of your charactersComment by GarnthIf there is no daily limit or colldown on Work Orders then these will make it even worse for more casual crafters.
If Work Order fulfilling is not limited then its entirely possible for single AH dedicated no-life still online crafter to monopolize them and ruin crafting for all other players on server

Work orders have GREAT potential, but any mistake they make with it can have catastrofic downsides.

Blizzard usually looks on BEST any given change can bring and quite often they completely ignore worst possible scenario which happens because they ignored possibility.
Over 90% of thing people complain about are caused by result of "Road to Hell is pawed with good intensions."Comment by MagnognomusInteresting concept, I would like to see how it plays out before any judge. One thing is for sure if the price is set to low no crafter will fulfill the request. I will do my usual calculations in excel and will work from there. One thing that can help as a crafter: I will not craft and keep posting in AH something that is not worth time/money.Comment by apedosmilConsidering the way work orders work, I hope you can view and interact with work orders in more places than the AH. AH doesn't require you to be online, so work orders need to be more accessible.Comment by ChibimishaWork order for 1 silver (so no one will do it) with the comment:
WTS +35 M+ Key, visit... www.something.moo

And it will takes a long time to fix that upcoming problem with sellers in that new UI.Comment by PorcorossoI feel like they should have it both ways; both the buyers and the producers being able to list work orders.

I think it being entirely buyer driven is a mistake, but I also understand that buyers should be able to make requests (do you know how difficult it was for me to hit raid-ready hit/crit in classic because i went a budget route rather than spamming dungeons or selecting the absolute BIS items?). Buyer driven will mean i can request more niche items.Comment by VSozonovThey said that in order to craft the very best armor you will need some materials that will come with weekly quests.. I bet that by the time you are able to craft a "mythic" item you will already not need it anymore but it will be a good for alt gearing not for mainComment by TouffyCrafting had, so far, been relatively free from the toxic competition that infiltrated almost all other aspects of the game. With the new quality system and crafting orders, it might no longer be the case.

Since Blizzard seems very proud to announce that you will need to do crafting orders in order to reach the top level because of the amount of components required, there's a very real possibility that this becomes hell for the more casual players or anyone not in the "first wave" of crafters.
I don't see any reason that would incentivize a buyer to allow a lower level crafter to do the work instead of requiring the top quality. The market will probably be completely locked by the top crafters.

I am all for making crafting more relevant (it has basically been an afterthought for the game's whole life), but it is important to leave reasonable avenues of progress for more casual players, or simply for players who have a life outside the game and cannot commit to it full time.

A solution might be, as has been implemented in FF14 for example (a game from which Blizzard seems to be taking a lot of inspirations these days) having NPCs provide limited (weekly ?) crafting orders adapted to your level. This solves the progression problem in a RP-friendly way.Comment by dkcmIt seemed like during the preview for crafting in DF that there would be some cosmetic crafting or cosmetics for your character dependent on what profession they were. Has this been more discussed anywhere?Comment by Khiri

WHATTF , after investing hundreds? of hours getting best possible crafting gear, enchants and gems on it, I need "LUCK" to craft ?

...On top of that, you would either need to get lucky with Inspiration or use a valuable Finishing Reagent that boosts skill to guarantee the item is crafted at top qualityComment by Snippey

WHATTF , after investing hundreds? of hours getting best possible crafting gear, enchants and gems on it, I need "LUCK" to craft ?

...On top of that, you would either need to get lucky with Inspiration or use a valuable Finishing Reagent that boosts skill to guarantee the item is crafted at top qualityComment by cordell9Having read all this, the #1 thing I am excited for is being able to use a material that is BOP that drops for my NON crafting characters and put in a work order specific to my CRAFTING character.

if nothing else is implemented, this alone will make me happy

Finally, the complaints about "why is this not BOA" can finally stop and you can just make that thing on the other character, no need to transfer it overComment by TiwieThat the motivation of making bank completely ignores the point of helping others becomes pretty apparent here.Comment by thewowcollectorIn the End of Expansion investments section, there was mentioned Torghast mogs - are there BoE's that drop from there?Comment by Snowy6Adding a lot more grind to levelling up crafting,